The Happy Afterlife of Ludwig W.

This book tells a great philosophical tale. The backstory of this tale is simple: the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published only one philosophical book during his lifetime: the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He left the lion's share of his philosophical writings to posterity in the form of unpublished manuscripts and typescripts amounting to more than 18,000 pages. In his will, Wittgenstein entrusted three of his former students Elizabeth Anscombe, Rush Rhees and Georg Henrik von Wright with the task of publishing from his writings what they thought fit. During the subsequent decades, these literary heirs edited the volumes that the learned world has come to know as the influential works of Wittgenstein. Now, the essays in this book tell about Wittgenstein's literary heirs in their ambition to publish the writings of their beloved teacher. This history of the posthumous publication processes for Wittgenstein's writings will extinguish the genius cult that still exists in some historiographies of philosophy. This cult is partly responsible for the impression that great philosophical works fall from the window of an ivory tower, in completed form, printed and bound, just in order to hit and inspire the next genius philosopher walking by. In actual fact, in the history of philosophy, there are a number of cases in which it takes the great philosophers' pupils and followers to bring their teachers' thought into a publishable form. Indeed, this is how literary tradition of Western philosophy begins. In the case of Wittgenstein's writings, this book opens, at least to some extent, the black box of the discipulary production processes of the making of a classic philosopher.

New Insights into the making of Wittgenstein based on the use of new archival sources Praxeological approach to the historiography of philosophy Inspiring interdisciplinary research of philosophy, editorial studies, sociology and media sciences

Autorentext

Christian Erbacher received his doctorate from the University of Bergen (Norway) for his research at the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen (WAB). He has conducted several international research projects on the history of editing Wittgenstein. On this topic, he has published a number of journal articles as well as the monograph "Wittgenstein's Heirs and Editors" (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He works as a clinical psychologist in Germany.

Inhalt

1. Editorial Approaches to Wittgenstein's Nachlass.- 2. Wittgenstein and his Literary Executors.- 3. Ludwig Wittgenstein.- 4. Good Philosophical Reasons for Bad Editorial Philology?- 5. Among the omitted stuff, there are many good remarks of a general nature.- 6. The Tragedy of Tübingen.- 7. The Happy Afterlife of a Testament.